((Apologies, Ryvvn. I'd like to think/hope you're not a spai, but the circumstantial evidence was getting awfully hard to ignore. ))Agents Red and DOM, thank you for joining me. My apologies for the slightly misleading statements I used to bring us here. While I've found some anomalies in the reports from my spies they are unrelated to the topic at hand.

With Ryvvn taking a relaxing nap under Red's watchful gaze, I thought it best to discuss his loyalty, or rather the lack thereof.

I believe we may have been making a dangerous assumption. For analysis purposes, we have been assuming that there are 4 equal teams of 5 and 4 individual unaligned. This fits neatly and is nicely balanced, certainly very appealing to someone looking to evaluate things. However, we have no assurance that is actually the case.

Suppose, instead, that there 3 teams of 5, 1 team of 4, and 5 unaligneds.

The team of 3 could be counterbalanced by a conversion ability of some kind that resulted in a mole. Perhaps a conversion tied to a... resurrection?

The converted resurrectee would of course have to act as if they were part of their original team, giving every appearance of being a perfectly happy member returned to the loving embrace of their faction.

The fact that it was not one of us responsible for the resurrection of Ryvvn has made me deeply suspicious. Why would another faction (or the unaligned) resurrect one of us and take no credit for it? They would have to have a powerful incentive to do so when such a power could be used on one of their own, and converting someone into a mole would certainly be worth it. Ryvvn was the first person from a team to be eliminated and his PM ability would make him a natural choice (particularly if the mole does not get access to their new allegiance's discussion forums).

Look at what's happened since his return:On Day 4, after clamoring for the death of Rekard, MEM is conveniently visited with an anonymous offer to give us just that. He then "helpfully" volunteers to vote for whoever I do in a fairly blatant attempt to "prove" that he is still one of us. He also declines to use his PM abilities, claiming that he can't think of any good use for them.

On Day 5, surprise! MEM is now quite dead. Quite a suspicious timing, given that a) He was about to kill stigmata, a Cardassian and b) It was a Cardassian (Blindsniper) that was likely responsible for Ryvvn resurrection. A random assassination that just *happens* to target our own assassin? With no prior spying having taken place on MEM? An absurd chain of coincidences. Further, during Day 5 Ryvvn's PM power magically and conveniently is blocked after I lay out my suspicions about who is on which team. If he was using his PMs for his own purposes (perhaps to relay information back to his new masters?) what better excuse could there be?

Finally, look at who else has just been resurrected today: The Federation seer. We know that stigmata was able to recharge a teammate's power, so the return of San is perfectly in line with Blindsniper using his resurrection to lay claim to yet another soul.

However, this is all circumstantial. While I could likely convince the Council to lynch Ryvvn tomorrow as a suspected socipath, I did not want to act without first consulting you two. This is why I asked Agent Red to remove our returned friend from the equation today. He will be unable to inform his Masters of what we're planning today, and with luck he will confess his crimes while being interrogated. Unfortunately, a lack of results from the interrogation will not guarantee his allegiance, but it would certainly be a point in his favor.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

The anomaly I discovered in the reports of my spies was another duplicate of Agent Red's results. Neither of these incidents should have been possible because Agent Red helpfully removed her targets from play for the following day. This means that nobody should have been able to target them in order to Seer them.

I must therefore conclude that either my spies have either been inept and have been disobeying explicit instructions not to target our own, or there is someone else out there spying on our spies, a most disturbing thought.

((My role PM was explicit in saying my power worked on Seers from *other* factions. Qmega has so far declined to respond to my attempts to seek clarification, so I'm inclined to believe that there's another passive seer-spy out there.))

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

I thought that might be the plan - that's why I went in for the communication block on the Cardassians, and waited until T-5 minutes to reveal said action here - forums didn't get locked promptly, so Ryvvn might've been able to report back - if that's the situation, but they're hopefully locked up a bit.

I'm not sure that I buy a full-conversion at this point. Let's wait to see what Red brings back to the table.

Aaaaand just a bit ticked that I'm being punished today for the Player List not being updated.

DastardlyOldMan wrote:I'm not sure that I buy a full-conversion at this point. Let's wait to see what Red brings back to the table.

The thing is, why in the world would Blindsniper resurrect not just one but *two* of his enemies? I could mayyyyybe buy him using it on Ryvvn at the start to sow discord since stigmata would be able to reset it for him. But to then resurrect San when Stigmata was dead? The resurrection being innocent is no longer a bridge in NYC that I'm willing to buy.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

DastardlyOldMan wrote:Might be that factioned dead come back for a day - Ryvvn didn't get mugged by Augen, from what I can see - he actually disappeared, 24 hours after he reappeared; San may only be around for a day.

Dunno if that's flavor-text or not, just something to think about.

It would have to be two days, Ryvvn was back for Day 4 and Day 5. I did notice the difference in flavor/statement but I'm currently chalking it up to Qmega shortening a repeated effect to a simple statement (note that the same shortening has been applied to CAD and San).

I'm sure the dead thread is either laughing/groaning (sorry, MEM!) or cheering at me at this point. Damn these binary decision gates.

On the plus side, Griffy was a Klingon exactly as predicted.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

All circumstantial at this point, IMHO. We can wait to see what Red has to say, but the only thing jumping out at me is a bit of conspiracy-paranoia

Let's go forward as though Ryvvn is on the team, but we won't rely on his PMs for any key strategizing or anything like that, and maybe AVS and I keep our targets secret until the next day (with recommendations still welcome, of course). Blindsniper probably ought to be a priority kill for us.

Since lynch votes are private: dfer, FurinMirado, sphenodont to go after? I'm mainly inclined toward sphenodont: We know he's not a Klingon after yesterday's late vote on Griffypoo, and I'm fairly certain he's not Federation after his vote on Visigoth on Day 3 (depending on whether you believe Visigoth is Federation or not), so that makes him a probable Cardassian.

DastardlyOldMan wrote:All circumstantial at this point, IMHO. We can wait to see what Red has to say, but the only thing jumping out at me is a bit of conspiracy-paranoia

Let's go forward as though Ryvvn is on the team, but we won't rely on his PMs for any key strategizing or anything like that, and maybe AVS and I keep our targets secret until the next day (with recommendations still welcome, of course). Blindsniper probably ought to be a priority kill for us.

Since lynch votes are private: dfer, FurinMirado, sphenodont to go after? I'm mainly inclined toward sphenodont: We know he's not a Klingon after yesterday's late vote on Griffypoo, and I'm fairly certain he's not Federation after his vote on Visigoth on Day 3 (depending on whether you believe Visigoth is Federation or not), so that makes him a probable Cardassian.

No night-kill last night - interesting.

Remember, lynch votes are inverted today. The person with the *least* votes dies. Thus we should be looking at who to save (i.e. you).

Also, one of us should be getting a powerup at some point. One of the reasons I asked Augie to target Ryvvn was in the hopes that he wouldn't be eligible for the powerup.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

My spies have caught Hellheart behaving in a Sociopathic manner (full report in the powers thread). Since Qmega has continued to ignore my request for clarification, I think it's best to conclude that there is another spy out there watching. Agent Red, you should assume henceforth that your results are known to someone else out there.

On Ryvvn: The timing of his death becomes very suspicious. It's possible that it's purely a matter of his only being animated for 48 hours, but I think it's far more likely that he relayed his discovery to Blindsniper in time for his master to choose someone else to animate in his place. Either way, we should know in 48 hours whether that's true or not. I do think removing Blindsniper should become a priority for us, and is perhaps something the Federation could be enlisted in. I could pursue that angle in the Council today (by labelling Blindsniper a possible sociopath) to set him up for death tomorrow, if that course of action appeals.

Omega: Any updates for our team power last night?

Edit: And speaking of the Council, the Klingon Chancellor has just claimed FurinMirado as a Klingon.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

If Furin's a Klingon, I think it's very likely that we've got one of each faction here, which just means that everyone votes for their own faction, San ~backstabs dferrantino - if the Spy theory is correct - and the unaligned (one, two, whatever) round things out.

I'm thinking about publicly warning the Federation about San's probably spy-ness. I'm even thinking about naming blindsniper as the cause when I do.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-To our naked Federation colleague:You may wish to know that your freshly-returned colleague is, in fact, a Cardassian mole. We suffered the same annoyance with Ryvvn. Fortunately, we were forewarned by our spies and knew not to trust him, but I doubt your pathetic excuse for an intelligence network would have spotted the signs.

We offer this bargain:Before committing suicide, our interrogators managed to extract the name of Ryvvn's master. We will reveal the identitiy of this mad Cardassian scientist in exchange for a pledge to eliminate him tomorrow (assuming the Cardassians will not somehow benefit from his being lynched tomorrow). We encourage the Klingons to join us in this effort as well, as they are certainly next on the list to have a Cardassian spy amongst their ranks. Perhaps it will be your former Chancellor returned from the dead? Wouldn't that be a disgrace.-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you want to try claiming to not be a sociopath, DOM, reference the naked Federation President, the conspicuously absent Klingon Chancellor, and the Romulan Senator patting himself on the back. That should be convincing enough without hinting towards a specific faction, I think.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-To our naked Federation colleague:You may wish to know that your freshly-returned colleague is, in fact, a Cardassian mole. We suffered the same annoyance with Ryvvn. Fortunately, we were forewarned by our spies and knew not to trust him, but I doubt your pathetic excuse for an intelligence network would have spotted the signs.

We offer this bargain:Before committing suicide, our interrogators managed to extract the name of Ryvvn's master. We will reveal the identitiy of this mad Cardassian scientist in exchange for a pledge to eliminate him tomorrow (assuming the Cardassians will not somehow benefit from his being lynched tomorrow). We encourage the Klingons to join us in this effort as well, as they are certainly next on the list to have a Cardassian spy amongst their ranks. Perhaps it will be your former Chancellor returned from the dead? Wouldn't that be a disgrace.-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you want to try claiming to not be a sociopath, DOM, reference the naked Federation President, the conspicuously absent Klingon Chancellor, and the Romulan Senator patting himself on the back. That should be convincing enough without hinting towards a specific faction, I think.

Edit:If we get vote counts but not names for the lynch vote today we should be able to determine which factions visi/spheno belong to. In a one-from-each-faction split I'd expect:spheno: 4 or 5dferr: 3 or 4Furin: 2DOM: 3With a random +1 thrown in somewhere by Hellheart. The Cardassians could also spoil things with their extra vote from San, but it seems unlikely.

If spheno and dferr are both Federation, things get far more random since there's a block of 5! votes from the Cardassians in play. They could easily choose who gets lynched in this scenario by spreading out their votes to 2 or 3 targets.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

DOM: You will want to make your claim in the Day Thread soon-ish today. The Federation President just claimed to know the identities of Furin, dferr, and spheno (which slightly reinforces my belief in spheno-as-a-Fed) and is asking for someone in the Council to claim you.

Do wait a bit, though, about to go live with my Council post.

Edit: Council post is live.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

It occurs to me that, thanks to the Council, we could immediately identify all of the sociopaths if we wanted to, without revealing factions.

Post a moderately-long list of random dictionary words to the council. Tell each Council leader to give each of their members two or words at random from the list and have them make a Day Thread post with those secretly-chosen words in them. No two people should have the same set of words: If multiple people collide with their choice of words, the person with the later post must be assigned new words and post again.

I don't think we should do this since I think keeping a sociopath alive until near end-game is to our benefit, but it remains a possibility.

Edit: hahahahah, look at Hellheart try and sell DOM-as-Sociopath to cover his own ass.

Edi2: Doh. I was hoping you'd use all three references to disguise your possible allegiance, DOM. Still a bit nebulous, but I was harping on the President for being naked so you may have possibly "confirmed" yourself as a Romulan.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

The Cardassian representative is denying the existance of moles, citing the rules. I've countered that the rules clearly say that's only true at the start of the game and that we caught his mole red-handed.

He also claims that one of Furin or CAD is a spy of some kind, and that DOM/Hellheart are not spies (what "spy" means in this context is incredibly unclear, since he claims each team has one. I think he's really talking about Seers).

Perhaps Agent Red's interrogation of CAD will provide clarity once the results are known.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Going forward, I believe I'll suggest multiple courses of action and leave it up to you two to decide on your own which one is best (or if another is better):

Suggestions for possible targets for Agent Red:rekard - Removes a known Cardassian from the table tomorrow, makes them less able to vote to defend Blindsniper.Mortus - *probably* removes a Cardassian, also settles the question on which team Mortus belongs to.

Do please explain after the fact why you opted for the choice you did, of course.

((I did receive my power report Augie, so you may just have to prod him with a sharper stick than usual.))

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

We are certainly a troublesome bunch, what with our constant spying and questioning. We'd be happy to lend your our expertise if you're finding it too much to handle, Q. Just give us access to your powers and we'll sort this all out in a jiffy

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Federation and Klingons have accepted the proposed offer. I have replied back naming Blindsniper and stating that we have methods for verifying our information and are certain that there was no misdirection/falseshoods involved.

The Cardassian representative claims San is not a mole or spy, which is very amusing.

The beauty of this play is that, as the Federation and Klingons have acknowledged (I did not mention this aspect at all), even if the whole resurrection-mole thing is a lie the mere fact that I can identify a Cardassian is enough for the other factions to work together to lynch him in order to remove the Cardassian numbers advantage.

Edit: Also, I have received clarification from Omega: My role PM has a miswording. I am, in fact, capable of seeing Agent Red's results so the possibility of another seer-spy out there is reduced from near-certainty to merely a possibility.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

I've obviously voted for myself today, and would prefer if you all would as well. I still think it's going to come down to either a coinflip or the Cardassians playing Kingmaker. I don't see Hellheart voting my way (since he already tried to kill me on Night 2). If sphenodont is Federation with dferrantino, they're going to have to split votes; if he's Cardassian, we should see a fairly obvious split along party lines, with HH pushing ~someone over the edge / e: out of danger.

I would guess that at least one other team has PM powers, although hard to say (Ryvvn's power may have been ~stolen by Ozy when he was seered as Romulan, explaining the other anonymous PM that went out). They may be able to influence the vote through background manipulations.

If spheno is Federation, there shouldn't be split voting. They'd be nuts to try an split their votes 2-2 and should almost certainly be trying to save dferr and throw spheno to the wolves (because spheno has missed so many days he's been as useless to the Feds as he has been to the rest of us). Particularly with the possibility of traitor-San in the mix, a vote split opens the possibility of San not voting for his assigned target and letting that person die (with only a single vote even the Klingons can out-muscle them). This ignores the Cardassians, of course, who in a spheno-as-Fed situation can completely dictate who lives and who dies.

Unfortunately for the Cardassians, their forums are locked today so they can't coordinate to properly play Kingmaker. What a shame. So in the event that spheno is a Fed we can look forward to a fairly random/unpredictable distribution of Cardassian votes. Fun times!

If you do die, DOM, it's been a pleasure working with you. Agent Red and I will wish you a safe journey to the Halls of Erebus

Edit: Also, as an update: No traffic in the Council chambers since I revealed Blindsniper's identity, which makes me a bit sad. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

DOM, do you want to lead the charge on Blindsniper tomorrow? You're the freshest possibly-Romulan person out there I think due to the nature of your not-a-sociopath claim today. I could be the other one to do that, but I think I'd prefer not to call more attention to myself in the hopes that my voting pattern with Augie yesterday will be ignored/overlooked.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

I can lead off, yes - I'm guessing, however, that whomever-seered-Hellheart will also have an agenda, so we want to bear that in mind - if they're trying to blackmail/ally with him or trying to out him.

DastardlyOldMan wrote:I can lead off, yes - I'm guessing, however, that whomever-seered-Hellheart will also have an agenda, so we want to bear that in mind - if they're trying to blackmail/ally with him or trying to out him.

It would most likely be either be the Klingons or Cardassians, since San was dead at the time. The Klingons (all 2 of them) are theoretically on-board with the plan to lynch Blindsniper tomorrow. If both the Feds and the Klingons are fully on-board there's nothing the Cardassians can do about it since we substantially outnumber them even with Hellheart assisting.

One note: If we get an entirely single-file lynch vote tomorrow, it'd be great if you (or me, if I lead off because you're dead) switch off to Hellheart near EOD. This would help prevent Hellheart (most likely) or the Cardassians (highly unlikely) from playing the vig-snipe game and shoving the lynch elsewhere on the basis of a single vote.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM